2 years!

So, I have been post-college for two years now, and it so happens to be the juncture where I am moving to the next piece of my life. In honor of that, I looked back at my three journals (which were very haphazardly used, much like this blog) from this brief by interesting period of "real-life" (after which, of course, I am retreating directly back into school, just to keep up with my own idealism, I guess) when I worked at S&B and lived in Queens.

JOURNAL ONE

"So maybe I am a writer who doesn't write. OR, maybe I am a writer who WILL write, one day. One day very soon. I can't believe I just bought something for $26. I never spend money like that!" (I find this sort of endearing. How little real sense I had of money until I started, briefly, making some not at minimum wage.)

"So, I should go to sleep but I don't want to because that means I have to go to work tomorrow. I guess I'll have to go to work tomorrow anyway."

"Tomorrow I'm working for 18 hours straight. I suppose I've done that before, but I can't remember any specifics."

"I want: X to write back soon, to have a good weekend, to have tomorrow go by fast, to get enough sleep, to not get fat, to be a great writer, to find an agent, to sell my screenplay for loads of money, to be an artist and a designer, to not sacrifice my ideals, to change something positively." (I like the progression of this little paragraph. It's almost cute, as if I wrote it when I were ten. But I am glad I wrote it less than two years ago.)

"There is a thing with being an artist where you have to choose which voices to listen to. It seems that some of my early short stories were crap, and some others managed the craft quite well. As soon as I was told I can write a normal story -- that was when I should've gone back to doing whatever the hell I wanted. You need to know which advice to drop and which to take -- this is harder than you think. There are tons of would-be-writers out there who are too stubborn or self-righteous to change their craft. Maybe they think they are just doing there own thing and fucking the man, but maybe they just suck at writing. On the other hand, if Faulkner or Joyce had listened to anyone say "make more sense" then they would've been fucked, too. So, alas, it is not so easy to tell which advice to take, which to leave -- that is an art all its own, I suppose."

"I guess I always kind of shamefully regret never actually being put in a mental institution for a brief but writerly, tortured-soul period of time."

"I am on the LIRR and it is night and I like pressing my face up against the window."

"I would never want to go back to high school -- but that pain was so real, and you were so young so it was all the more powerful, and there were so many possibilities for when you were free -- how you'd live differently. It's not quite like that, though. You don't really have all of those possibilities, you are always bound by something -- money, a job, yourself, your family, what everyone thinks you should be."

"What do I want? I must get it. And soon. I cannot wait my whole life to see if it will begin. It has begun, and so I must begin to live it how I want."

JOURNAL TWO

"I don't know how adults deal with life. I mean, at least with education you always, always felt like you were somehow going to the next level, and even if you didn't like what you were doing at a particular moment, there was at least an end in sight. I want to be independently wealthy. My mom always says that, but she makes a good point."

"I am supposed to be talented. I kind of feel like a washed-out Tenenbaum."

"Do you think it's the fact that the day is over that plays the biggest part in evening being so special, or the fact that it's dark? If it's because it's dark, I think I might like a long period of darkness so I can read and write and watch movies. Sometimes it feels very silly doing these things in the middle of the day."

"There is so much about my life to love: my creative celebration of random holidays such as The Oscars and National Poetry Month; my bed, my lime green room, my pink quilt; my mac; my family that loves me [...]"

"Funny how things important to a company aren't actually important at all."

JOURNAL 3

"I am not sure why I can't write a story. It is a bad omen for my future as a writer. GOD! I dislike plot so much. I just want to ramble directionlessly and see where I end up. I don't care if something happens. I don't' want to make some shit plot. Contemporary fiction always does that! Stupid, complicated plots where weird shit happens."

"I was using amazon.com's 'look inside' Sylvia Plath's journals. She wrote like a writer even there. I do not. I feel awkward writing details like that. Also, back then, people seemed to eat and drink things that sound literary, like 'cool sweet milk.' What is sweet milk? I don't even know."

"I'm trying to go about understanding how people manage to write books without big, ridiculous plots."

"Sometimes, when life is getting crazy, I look in the mirror and think: what would it be like in there? I would just crawl in there and live, just me and my room and an empty world, as if my room had been picked up by a tornado and was floating around."

"This is the life I want, I think. No schedule. Bohemian. This really might be it."

"That is am-az-ing. Crap. I am so bad at syllables. What's the definition of a syllable anyway?"

"Two cups of coffee. Today, tomorrow -- mine! How could I want for anything more but the assurance that this could last? Caffeinated on the free, unguarded potential of today."

xoxo,
Maria

moving

tips: moving is expensive and requires muscle.

conversation:

Me: I have so much to do!
Mom: Well, get out your list.
Me: I don't have a list!
Mom: WHAT?! You make lists for everything, your favorite bugs! your favorite colors!, you don't have a list for packing?

Life Update: My room is painted back to WHITE and everything is PACKED and I exit NYC on TUESDAY. I have a sort of vagabondy month coming up, and then I am moving to Virginia.

Now, Book Quiz, for kicks:

1) What author do you own the most books by? JD Salinger (I am kind of like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory)

2) What book do you own the most copies of? Probably Catcher in the Rye.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Since you ask, no! Actually, it bothers me when people oddly contort sentences to avoid ending them in prepositions.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with? It's hard with books, since you know how fucked up the character really is.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)? Perhaps One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Catcher in the Rye or The Things They Carried, all of which I've read at least three times.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? At a young age, I loved Cam Jansen and the Boxcar Kids. By fourth or fifth grade I know I liked Juniper, Matilda, My Side of the Mountain, Number of the Stars.

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year? A Separate Peace was not my favorite or Water for Elephants.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year? Lolita and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

9) If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be? Oh, my! The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, I suppose.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature? I feel that this is too important a question for me to just throw out a random answer.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie? The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay could be great if they didn't ruin it by just doing the adventurous parts. Also, it would be also fun to see how they did something like Franny and Zooey.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Maybe something like The Turn of the Screw because I don't like scary movies.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character. Well, I always fantasize that I'll be sitting on the train reading something like Philip Roth, and then he'll come on the train and ask me what I think of the book, and then I'll say something BRILLIANT and he'll be like, that's me, I wrote that. And then he'll take me out to lunch.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? I guess some of the NYTimes Bestsellers I have picked up here and there.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read? Their Eyes Were Watching God was difficult (because of the style of speech). Faulkner is hard in that way, too. (I hope we aren't counting poetry, because that list is very long.)

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? The Taming of the Shrew, perhaps, though that's not very obscure especially because Elizabeth Taylor's in the 1967 version.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians? Well, if you claim Nabokov for the Russians...

18) Roth or Updike? Roth, but I haven't read much Updike.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? They each get five points!

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Shakespeare.

21) Austen or Eliot? Must read more Eliot to judge well.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? I cannot get through The Waste Land, and that's the truth.

23) What is your favorite novel? The two I talk about most are probably The Things They Carried and Slaughterhouse-Five, but I have at least ten more favorites.

24) Play? Hamlet!!! I don't care if that's cliche, it is ridiculously good. Just like Starry Night is a good painting even IF it's located, in poster form, on 30% of the bedroom walls of college girls.

25) Poem? Right now I am very into this poem by Galway Kinnell.

26) Essay? Oh, I am a sucker for essays!!! They are my secret, dorky love. I love Once More to the Lake by EB White. Joan Didion's Why I Write is wonderful. There are more, of course.

27) Short story? I love many of Loorie Moore's short stories. The School by Donald Barthelme, The Pelvis Series by Neela Vaswani. More.

28) Work of nonfiction? That is hard because I very much like fiction that actually crosses the line into nonfiction and then weaves back into fiction.

29) Who is your favorite writer? Favorites are very difficult, especially since I usually become obsessed with specific books rather than an author's entire canon.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today? I don't feel at liberty to judge.

31) What is your desert island book? Too hard.

32) And... what are you reading right now? The Brothers Karamazov, The American Heritage Dictionary, more!

wow! just noticed I haven't updated in 15 days?! how can that be? what have I been doing???

i'm packing

"It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work is not only convenient but unavoidable." — Tennessee Williams, New York Times essay "On A Streetcar Named Success"

i hope i haven't just become a boring person

I'm working on a scrapbook on the computer, and I'm planning to order it from Blurb. It's only 7"x7" and it is supposed to be about the 1.5 years I spent working at Steve & Barry's and living in Queens. So, in order to get material I have been looking at my quote blog and also old posts on here. My posts used to be so much funnier & more interesting. What happened to me? Is it because everything else about life was so f*ing boring that I had to be creative in other places? And now that I can be creative in real life, I am boring here?

Rainbow

Can you see it? Im on the train and the is this little strip of rainbow in the sky and there hasnt even been rain. Not that anyone ever said that that is essential.

nyc things i've done

I'm getting really nervous about leaving NYC without having done really important things, so I'm going to write down the NYC things I have done or seen while living in NYC:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Guggenheim
The Greenway: Hudson River Park, Chelsea Piers, Battery Park, Irish Hunger Memorial
Ate a NYC Cupcake
Chinatown / Canal Street
St. Mark's Place / Lower East Side / Tompkins Square Park
Union Square Market / The Strand
Carnegie Hall performance
Lincoln Center (movie)
Columbus Circle
Long Island City (Queens)
5th Avenue window shopping (incl Apple Store, FAO Shwartz, Wes Anderson's Louis Vuitton bags!)
The Brooklyn Bridge (walked across)
DUMBO / Galapagos Art Space (Nerd Nite)
The Renegade Craft Fair in Willimgsburg, Brooklyn
Penn Station / Grand Central Station
Times Square at Night
Broadway (Wicked)
Views of all the Important Buildings
St. Patrick's Cathedral, Trump Tower, NBC Building
The Superhero Supply Store / that other part of Brooklyn
Central Park / Central Park Restaurant / Alice & Wonderland Statue / Belvedere Castle
Frank Warren "reading" @ bookstore
The Queens Museum of Art / The Panorama of NYC
The World's Fair Grounds (Unisphere, Abandoned Pavilion, Carousel, etc)
Real Chinese Food in Flushing
The New York Public Library (including Winnie-the-Pooh!)

That's all I can think of right now. Of course, I have also previously been to The Museum of Natural History, The MOMA, The Intrepid, & probably more.

SO MUCH I HAVE MISSSEEDDD!!!

advice

 

No matter how little smoothie seems to be at the bottom of the blender, always put the lid back on anyway.

if i have been absent from all of life, it is because i decided to read the entire dictionary in one month. i have been reading for at least 6 hours a day for four days, and i am only on c. granted, a and b are both 5% of the total dictionary. yes, i am taking notes. copious ones. part of the problem.

self ed.

I have spent hours reading history (and art history) textbooks, as well as wikipedia, and online dictionaries. Wikipedia is an amazing web of information. You start out with something (say, Socrates) and end up reading about Lord Byron (connection? Greek Love.).

I wrote down definitions for the following words today (granted some I already knew, worry not, but wanted to get down the origins or a more specific or alternate definition): louche, gravid, rakish, belle epoque, frisson, virulent, wormwood, celadon, digestif, umber, ocher, bumper crop, trawl, seine, dragnet, pernicious, teeming, ascending, imbue, natty, vermillion, vermeil, coiffure, coif, skullcap, oeuvre, canape, glaucous, dissolute, delterious, jettison, ganache, panacea, rejoinder, detritus, brusque, in toto, phrenology, excoriate, palimpsest, alight, diaspora, aegis, tonsure, elenchus, Socratic elenchus, ignoratio elenchi

You can see the trail of tributary transgressions (triple score alliteration!). The general trajectory, somehow, was the Russian Revolution in the morning to Greek and Rome in the evening. This reminded me of my general dislike for my under-undergraduate education. I learned about the Revolutionary War approximately five times. I read The Sign of the Beaver in both third and fifth grades. But somehow, in all of those years, we barely grazed the Russian Revolution or Ancient Greek or Rome? (And Lenin, by the way, learned Latin, Greek, and some German, French, and English! All in the amount of time, approximately, that I learned to count to ten in Spanish.)

I think my high school English teachers did a pretty good job of covering the classics as best as they could in the amount of time they had -- this is due to consistently having excellent English teachers. I read more "classics" in high school than I did in college. I am trying to fill in some of the blanks now, having added Huck Finn, Franny and Zooey, East of Eden, Lolita, The Stranger, The Great Gatsby, Cat's Cradle, A Clockwork Orange, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter to my classic novel have-reads since January. (The ones that standout for me, reflectively, are East of Eden, Lolita, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I am better with books, though, if I read them twice.)

But there is something I was wondering while glancing through an Art History Textbook -- why don't they teach literature more like they teach art? When you take an Art History class you look at and analyze pieces in the context of history (political and social history, sometimes personal histories) -- this is what gives them their punch. Why is something remembered but because it has significance or weight beyond itself? (When you read history textbooks, it is true that they often mention or even quote books of the times, but the quote is usually put in a little box in a corner, and everyone knows that when pressed for time you skip the quotes.)

You almost definitely look at paintings basically chronologically by region. For example, you look at impressionists and then modernists etc. This sort of historical context seems much less apparent in the study of literature. Maybe it's because you can look at 20 paintings in a class period but can only read one novel a week, so you might have a class on Shakespeare or a survey course on a particular time period, but never really on multiple time periods (there aren't Literature History books the way there are Art History Books, are there?). But couldn't they have a survey course, where you read excerpts and poetry and short stories? This way, you could get a good general idea of what to delve into deeper if you so chose. You could get a sense of the broad history of literature and the vicissitudes of styles. But this is coming from someone who wanted to take a course in college called, "Things You Should Probably Know So You Don't Look Stupid." That course is now called, "Maria Reads Wikipedia Articles for Hours on End."

Enough rambling! I must remember to go to the library tomorrow and return my (oops) overdue books!